Winning the culture war may mean activist have to Walk like Republicans
Or rather they have to copy Republican Tactics
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” - Sun Tzu,
To win this culture war activists are going to have to start thinking like republicans, I’m not saying all republicans are anti-choice nor that all Democrats are pro-choice when it comes to issues of reproductive or LGBTQ rights but if you align with one of those parties you have to understand that the Republican parties official position is anti-choice and Democrat party is pro-choice, I don’t want to get into a “basket of Deployable” argument here but there is no in-between..
That said pro-choice activists and I lump reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights together under the label pro-choice because both are arguments over how much rights someone should have over body autonomy.
It sounds ridiculous that anyone would advocate that a third party be delegated to decide personal choices like having children , who you marry or who you are but here we are with a patriarchy that believes government is ordained by God and like the kings of old should control every aspect of your life , and we are losing this war to them and no wonder they have thousands of years advantage over us we call it victory when we win a few court cases but at the same time the overall map is becoming more hostile. Those groups opposing “choice” are empowered by both the Dobb’s decision, the concurring statement by Clarence Thomas and the overall composition of not only the supreme court but district courts as well.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas called for the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its substantive due process precedents after it overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24.
The legislators and their powerful lobbies are adept at the art of court shopping that is picking District courts that are majority republican and those judges appointed by Donald Trump the 5th district and Circuit being the worse, but 11th and others are equally as hostile, clearly cases are being won not by what’s constitutional or impartial decisions but by the individual opinions of anti-choice judges, the opinions formed long before the cases heard. Clearly, we are not going to win in court alone.
Activist should be very familiar with the life cycle of a bill.
An introduced piece of legislation may not be cause for alarm, Politicians will sometimes introduce bills as signals or trial balloons, The legislation is introduced to make points with their base, they may also bring in lobbyist money, sometimes these bills are so outlandish they won’t get through committee, there have been introduced legislation that call for executing Homosexuals or women that seek abortions. But more concerning are bills introduced as trial balloons to see how far they will go to passage, more importantly to eventually get them before the conservatives on the Supreme Court, these should be watched very closely at the introduction stage.
After a piece of legislation is introduced it either isn’t acted on at all, remains idle or flows to one or more committees these smaller committees will decide if the legislation is passed on to the full House or Senate.
Legislation goes to Committee
Often these committees will open discussion to public comment be very careful the majority has already likely decided on moving the legislation along and it will take major rebuttal for them to change course, these hearings are often Charades to give an illusion of impartiality , These hearings involving Abortion or Gender care or transgender youth in sports will almost always be open to public comment from across the country this allows the organizers to bring in so called experts from other states, these are usually suggested by powerful anti-choice groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and might include people like Abigail Shriver a journalist with no experience with transgender youth but a person the right labels as an expert , there might also be GP’s , cardiologist, psychoanalyst for which the topic is way out of their field .
Activists should be aware of such hearings and get as many people as they can to come out or give written testimony , when possible bring in actual experts that have experience with reproductive health care or gender affirming care and bring in actual people to tell their personal stories but keep in mind organizers are looking for slipups.
If permitted invite local press to the hearings If not permitted arrange so the press can meet small groups of you after the hearings for interviews public opinion will be very important if this does move to the floors. After the hearings the committee votes to table the legislation or move it to the floor.
House or Senate Floor
When the legislation moves to the House or Senate Floor its red alert time for activists, probably the very first course of action is to call or email your State Rep or Senator and ask them to vote no on the legislation , this is also a good time for the additional actions I will describe below but keep in mind there could be a matter of days or even just hours between when the bill moves from the House to Senate , if the legislation is changed in the senate it goes back to the House for another consideration given that one tactic Senators can use is to get amendments added to the bill that might make it not only less attractive to the senate vote but also less attractive to the re-consideration by the House .
If the legislation passes both houses it goes to the governor for either veto or signing into law.Any of the above stages after introduction of legislation is a point to act
Key Points to Watch
Important consideration to determine if the legislation is likely to become law and on deciding what actions to take next.
Composition of the legislative body. For pro-choice / pro-LGBTQ legislation a democratic majority in either house likely signals the bill will be defeated however a small majority still has the possibility of one or more Democrats joining with republicans this can happen in Red States, contacting these reps and letting them know your position is very important
Is the Governor Republican or Democrat and would she/he support the legislation or veto it, surprisingly you cannot count on all Democratic Governors and there are some republican governors that will not go along with very ludicrous legislation that could hurt the economy of the state
If the Governor would oppose the legislation does the promoting party have a super majority that can override a governor’s veto
As told by Erin Reed, a hearing was held in the Judiciary committee of Montana for SB99 an anti-transgender bill that would forcefully detransition transgender youth in the state and make gender affirming care of youth a felony.
A surprisingly number of opponents to the bill testified including transgender youth and Doctors. One interesting moment occurred when Sen Jen Gross a Democrat began questioning the bill’s sponsor Senator John Fuller, she focused on the section about intersex in the legislation, “How does that relate to this” he asked looking dumbstruck, He didn’t even realize there was language in the bill he introduced that addressed intersex children.
The bill forbids any type of care for children who may be transgender but curiously exempted surgery for youth born with an Intersex condition. The legislation allowed surgery on intersex children even without consent.
Clearly the senator had not even read the whole bill. His legislation was one of similar so called SAFE act legislation being distributed as templates by organizations such as ALEC, Heritage Action and others. So, it’s clear that anti-choice lobbyist are driving the decision process in many cases senators like this have never met a youth that is transgender.
This and other legislation are part of a long-term campaign by national groups that see transgender rights as an issue on which they can harness voter anger as with the campaigns against CRT that reshaped many school boards and lifted Republicans in Virginia’s elections in 2021 though the midterm elections provided little evidence of it.
“This is a political winner,” said Terry Schilling, the president of the conservative American Principles Projectcompletly ignoring the consequences of pulling youth off treatment programs they have been in for several years.
So how do we deal with self-serving influencers like Schilling or Oligarchs such as Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society , surprisingly we must learn from and walk like republicans.
Walking like or rather thinking or copying the tactics of republicans is quite difficult for Activists, Let’s look at a few tactics
Fund Raising
Fund raising is used by both Democrats and republicans for their political candidates, but republicans rely on it the most and have launched fundraising campaigns from immigration to Coronavirus vaccine mandates. This suggestion is to use republican rhetoric against them, and fund raise off the abusive legislation.
The Email Campaign
The first step is creating a bulk email list there are surprising number of services that maintain not only public list but even specialized lists such as voters in all 50 states, specific information on voters however require a Freedom of Information act request but there is no need for that with this , you might also be able to obtain a current voting list through the DNC , once you have your list you can start composing your mailings , warning you are going to have a much easier time of this if you are part of an organization or PAC although it’s certainly possible for an individual to put campaigns together obtaining Lists or help from the DNC and other existing political orgs will be easier for an actual organization.
Non-profits are cost effective and very easy to set up through legal services such as Legal Zoom or Rocket Lawyer.
Set up a non-profit - legal zoom
With your lists in hand, it’s time to set up your campaign you can target an individual politician or a piece of legislation such as the above bills as an individual keep in mind to not include anything that can be considered defamatory, you will lessen your litigation risk if you are doing this as a part of an organization.
Many of those same services that provide lists also provide full-service bulk email campaign tools, these tools for a competitive rate will guide you through setting up your campaign.
You are also going to need a payment processing portal via which donations could be handled here there are a lot of choices paid services such as PayPal, Stripe, services such as GoFundMe and you could contact the DNC and possibly use Act Blue if your organization meets the DNC requirements, DNC Chair Harris owes the LGBTQ community and hopefully be willing to help.
Then it’s just a matter of launching your campaign, monitoring donations, sending reinforcement emails and handling your donations.
Allocating Donations from your campaigns
The Treasury department has many restrictions around this and its best to contact them for the limits of what you can do with donations, but some suggestions would be
Provide a refugee fund for parents of transgender children forced to leave their states
Develop and deploy websites to provide resources for woman seeking help with abortion information
Provide a fund for woman who must leave their state for reproductive help
But the number one use for any substantial domains is to create or buy digital or cable ads.
Digital ads
Digital Ads can be self-created content, there are plenty of content creation tools such as imovie, Premier, Luma fusion, Final-cut pro and some social media sites such as TikTok or Snapchat have their own content creation tools, best to keep your videos short to the point and engaging with musical backgrounds, effects etc. but be careful of copyright on stock images or music that isn’t public domain. You can also for $$$ work with a professional content creation company.
Creating your first TikTok video
Self-created adds are the cheapest route to go for the novice , avoid hosting on YouTube as the right has become very adept at launching mass reporting campaigns to report such videos as abusive.
TikTok is the new “Facebook” for Gen Z and Millennials which is the real reason that the republican congress is trying to ban it in the United States. It may be true that Chinese Intelligence is able to gain some personal data on Americans Citizens but likely no more than they can get through other sources including information aggregated from the millions of routers and Chinese electronics sold in the United States.
An engaging ad campaign on TikTok could reach a young audience and as the 2022 midterms showed that could be a valuable block to reach
Eric Swalwell’s ad about Kevin McCarty is a great example its short and engaging
Ads can be of several flavors or combination of, an add around an Act such as Governor Cox recently signing an Anti-transgender health care bill could also include information about the governor himself.
An ad about the sponsor of a bill could be targeted at the customers of any businesses the sponsor might own or have interest in. for instance a compelling ad for a sponsor of anti-abortion legislation might be
“This is senator John Smith, John Smith recently introduced an abortion without exceptions bill under Senator Smiths bill a young girl raped by her own father would be forced by the state to carry the child to term
This is X insurance company, John Smith is Chief Operations officer, would you really put the life and wellbeing of your daughter in John Smith’s capable Hands?”
The next Step up would be digital ads on services such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, such ads range from reasonable in price to outrageous, but price is going to determine the number and type of customers you are going to reach.
Cable or Network ads will be the most expensive but are going to reach the broadest of the public a 30 second spot on a modest cable channel could cost between 1000 and 10,000 US dollar whereas a 30 second spot on a major cable network or during a major game like the Super Bowl could start at 25,000 and go up to several hundreds of thousands of dollars, some companies pay millions for super bowl adds.
Resorting to tactics often used by republicans may feel strange to pro-choice activists but it’s clear wafting for Congress or the courts to take some action is not going to always be a winning strategy